Answering service pricing
Almost nobody in this category publishes a price. You are asked to request a quote, sit through a discovery call, and find out at the end whether it was ever going to be affordable. We would rather you knew now and left if it is wrong for you.
There is a reason the industry hides it, and it is not a flattering one. Answering services are traditionally billed per minute or per call, which makes the real monthly cost genuinely hard to state — and conveniently, it also means the invoice grows in exactly the months when your business is doing well. A busy December costs you more precisely because it was busy.
Ours is a flat monthly price. It does not change with call volume, and it does not change with the hours you cover, because there is no night shift being paid for. Those two facts are most of what you need to compare us against anyone else.
The prices
Shown in US dollars. The figures below are a starting point for small and mid-sized businesses, not a universal rate card — scope is stated against each tier so you can see immediately which one you are reading. Larger and multi-site requirements are priced on scope, and we would rather say that here than quote you a number that turns out not to apply.
Answering
One line answered properly, on the hours you choose. The tier most businesses should start on.
Applies to: Single location, one main line, standard business hours or 24/7.
- Every call answered on your chosen hours — after hours, 24/7, or as overflow
- Your questions answered from your own information: services, prices, area, availability
- Appointments booked into your live diary and confirmed in writing
- Escalation to a human on rules you write, in your words
- Written summary of every call, and a log you can read back
- Unlimited simultaneous callers — no engaged tone, no hold queue
Right for: A business losing calls outside office hours, or during the busy hour it cannot staff for.
Answering+
Several lines or locations, deeper knowledge, and the follow-up that turns answered calls into booked work.
Applies to: Up to three lines, locations or departments at one organisation.
- Everything in Answering
- Multiple lines, locations or departments with their own routing rules
- Multi-channel — phone, SMS and WhatsApp answered from one set of rules
- Automatic follow-up when a quote or enquiry goes quiet
- Cancellation filling and reminder sequences
- Priority support and a monthly review of real transcripts
Right for: Practices, firms and agencies with more than one line, or anyone whose lost revenue is in follow-up rather than first contact.
Enterprise
Priced on scope, because at this size the honest answer is that it depends. Told to you before any work starts, not at the end of a discovery process.
Applies to: Multi-site groups, franchises, and organisations with regulatory or procurement requirements.
- Everything in Answering+
- Unlimited lines, locations, brands or franchise sites
- Routing, escalation and reporting defined per site or per region
- Integration with your existing telephony, CRM or practice management stack
- Named contact, agreed response times and a documented escalation path
- Security, data-residency and compliance review before anything goes live
Right for: Anyone for whom the tiers above are obviously the wrong shape — you will know if this is you.
Why the published prices say “starting at”
Because they are a floor, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of thing this page exists to avoid. A single-location business with one line and standard hours pays the published figure. A twelve-site group with its own telephony stack, a procurement process and a security review does not, and quoting them the same number would be a fiction that unravels on the first call.
What we will not do is hide the entry price to protect the upside. If you are a small business, you can see right now whether this is affordable, and you can leave without talking to anybody if it is not. That is the whole point of publishing.
What the setup fee actually buys
It is the part that decides whether any of this works, and it is mostly a conversation rather than engineering. An answering service is only as good as the information behind it, and in most businesses that information has never been written down anywhere.
- The conversation that decides whether the answers are any good: your services, your prices, your service area, your availability
- Writing your escalation rules — what wakes someone up, and what waits until morning
- Connecting it to your diary or practice management system where that is possible
- Building and testing the call flows against real scenarios before it takes a live call
- Two weeks of tuning after go-live, which is when nearly all corrections happen
Several clients have told us the exercise was worth doing on its own, because it surfaced inconsistencies their own team had been improvising around for years.
Why there is no per-call charge
Per-call and per-minute billing exists because a traditional answering service is paying people to be available, and people cost money by the hour whether the phone rings or not. That model is honest for what it is. It simply is not our cost structure, so passing it on would be strange.
The practical difference shows up on your worst day. A storm, a cold snap, a weekend when everything happens at once — the days when call volume triples are the days a per-minute service costs the most, and they are the days you most want the phone answered. With a flat price you can want the calls without wincing at the invoice.
What changes the price
Not the hours, and not the call volume. What moves it is scope: how many separate lines, locations or departments need their own rules, how many systems it has to connect to, and whether you want the follow-up and cancellation-filling work that sits on top of simply answering.
If you are a single business with one line and one diary, the first tier is almost certainly what you want, and we will say so on the call rather than walking you up the page.
When it is not worth the money
Three cases, and we would rather put them on the pricing page than let you find out after paying a setup fee.
- Your phone is not ringing. This captures demand, it does not create it. At that point the money belongs in marketing and we will tell you so.
- You take a handful of calls a week. The arithmetic does not work. Run it honestly before you buy — the calculator takes two minutes.
- You already have someone answering out of hours who is not busy. Then this is a cost saving, not a revenue gain, and a much smaller win than the rest of this site suggests.
Common questions about cost
How much does an answering service cost?
Ours starts at $249 a month plus a one-off setup fee, for a single-location small or mid-sized business. Across the wider market you will see per-minute and per-call plans as well as flat monthly ones, which makes direct comparison harder than it should be — the question worth asking any provider is what a genuinely busy month costs, not what the headline rate is.
Is there a per-call or per-minute charge?
No. The price is the same whether it handles ten calls or a thousand, and the same whether you cover evenings only or all 168 hours in the week.
Is there a contract?
Monthly. If it is not earning its keep, the correct thing for you to do is stop paying for it, and a long tie-in would only ever be protecting us from that.
What about a cheap answering service?
If price is the only criterion, be careful what the cheap option actually does. A service that takes a name and a number for very little money has not solved your problem — the caller still waits, and while they wait they ring the next number. The comparison that matters is cost against calls converted, not cost alone.
Do you charge more for 24/7 than for after-hours?
No, for the reason above: there is no shift being staffed, so more hours cost no more. See 24/7 cover and after-hours cover for which one you actually need.
I am in the UK or Ireland — do these prices apply?
These are our US figures. We are based in the UK and Ireland and bill in pounds sterling, so ask and we will quote you directly rather than converting a dollar price that would not be right for your market.
How does this compare with hiring someone?
We have written that up properly, including the cases where hiring is the right answer: AI receptionist versus hiring a receptionist. There is also a longer breakdown of what an AI receptionist costs on the blog.
Not sure which tier, or whether it is worth it at all?
A short call and an honest answer. If the arithmetic does not work for your business we will say so — it is a better use of both our time than a setup fee you regret.